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Posts Tagged ‘Election 2016’

Post-election anxieties are pretty heightened right about now, and election results have left many people asking, How?!? Why?!? What?!? Fingers are being pointed in many directions, but one culprit taking the lead is “fake news”. So much so, some “fake news” bloggers are actually claiming partial responsibility for the election of Donald Trump.

“Fake news” is a form of news satire. Content is presented in a format typical of mainstream journalism, but the actual content is anything but real and often pokes fun at current events. Fake news stories pop up everywhere on social media sites, and receive almost immediate attention, likes, shares, and reactions from users due to its sensationalized material. According to BuzzFeed News Analyst Craig Silverman, “the top-performing fake election news stories on Facebook generated more engagement than the top stories from major news outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, NBC News…”. Silverman used a tool called BuzzSumo to compare the way the public engaged or interacted with traditional news stories vs fake news stories that peddled false claims during the final three months of the US presidential campaign. He found that the 20 top performing “fake news” stories received 8.7 million shares, reactions, likes, etc. on Facebook while the 20 top performing new stories from reputable publications received 7.3 million.

Does this mean that fake news won the election for Donald Trump? Most likely not. But it does mean that people either are not as media savvy as we hoped or, we tend to trust almost anything once it is posted online — no questions asked. While companies such as Facebook and Google have amped up their abilities to block ad monies that promote fake news and hoax stories, two individuals have created extensions for Chrome to help people circumvent untrustworthy new sites by warning them when they are visiting sites or reading material that is known to be misleading, satirical, or a hoax.

First, Daniel Sieradski created the “B.S. Detector” on Tuesday, November 15th for Chrome browsers only. This extension will identify and flag articles from questionable resources while users are browsing Facebook. Sieradski’s invention relies on a pre-generated list of well-known fake news sites created by Melissa Zimdars, a communication and media professor from Merrimack College in Massachusetts. Users may submit requests to update and change this list.

The second extension, Fake News Alert, was created by New York magazine journalist Brian Feldman and was released Thursday, November 17th. If a user attempts to visit a known hoax site, a pop-up or banner appears to alert users. Feldman also uses Zimdars’ preexisting list of fake news sites to assist people who may not be media savvy or have been foiled hook, line, and sinker into reading and believing one of these articles.

These latest creations may diminish the outpouring of misinformation, but they also have a few downsides. First, they can only be used on Chrome browsers. Second, it is up to the user to proactively download the tool. And most notably, these extensions only work on the specific website domain, which means users must actually click on the website link in order to receive an alert. According to Feldman, preemptive alerts that flag articles before they are opened or read would require a more sophisticated version of his Fake News Alert Chrome extension. And similar to any antivirus software, new hoax sites can be created that aren’t in the extension’s database.

The good news — Both of these tools were created in about an hour and their inventors admit they are pretty bare bones. There is plenty of room for tinkering and improvement, which means there is ample opportunity for you all to hack the system and build your own app, fight against fake news, and enable people to place more trust in what they are reading!

Want to create your own technology life hack? Stop by Teen Central during Open Lab time.

“Hack the System!” features examples of technology life hacks created by Ally, the Youth Technology Librarian at Teen Central. Check back on the third Friday of each month for her latest post.

Welcome to the first edition of Stop the Press, BPL’s monthly current events blog for Teens.

If you will be 18 years of age on or after Tuesday, November 8th, 2016, this is your year to finally participate in the election of our next President! Think about it: your vote in national, state and local elections affects everything around you. The roads you drive on, the train you take, your college expenses and student loans, laws that affect the rights of everyone — those are all decided by laws passed by the people we elect to represent us. Political elections give us the opportunity to choose who we believe will best represent us and what matters to us.

Still don’t think your vote matters? A lot of other people agree with you:

The first step in being eligible to vote is to register. This is not something that is automatically done for you; you have to register in advance.

Wednesday, October 19th is the absolute last day to register to vote in Massachusetts for the November election. October… that’s six months away! Yes, you have plenty of time, but why not get it out of the way now (if you’ll be 18 or older on 11/8/2016)?

Good news: if you currently have a Massachusetts ID with a signature (driver’s license, learner’s permit, non-driver ID), you can register to vote online! Check it out HERE.

Even if you don’t have a state-issued ID, you can print the application out from your computer, sign it, and mail or bring the form in person to your local election official. Helpful information about the Massachusetts voting process can be found HERE.

Will you be out of town or unable to get to the polls on election day? You can vote BEFORE election day either in person or by mail! More info HERE.

If you’re planning to vote, now is the time to start thinking about who and what you want to vote for. Procon.org is a great online resource to help you gather information on the different Presidential candidates and where they stand on the issues.

Teen Vogue has an article with a helpful state-by-state guide to the 2016 election. If you want to be further engaged with the voting process, Rock the Vote is worth checking out!

And as always, you can ask your friendly local librarian for help accessing information and voter registration forms. We’re here to help!

Are you interested in keeping up with the news and current events? The Boston Public Library has subscriptions to newspapers that you can read in the library or online.

*”Stop the Press” features current events posts by Rebecca, the Teen Librarian at the Grove Hall Branch, on the first Tuesday of every month.